1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method, system and software product used in the area of computer-aided engineering design and analysis, more particularly to an accelerated design optimization method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the conventional design approach, an engineering design is improved by evaluating its response (e.g., computer aided engineering analysis result) and making design modifications based on experience or intuition. The drawback of the conventional approach is that the final design may not always be the “best” design, since the design objectives are sometimes in conflict. Also it is not very clear how to modify the design to achieve the best compromise of these objectives. A more systematic approach is then used to alleviate the drawback: the design criteria and variables are defined first before a “best” design is computed or achieved. The procedure by which the design variables are modified to obtain the best design satisfying the design criteria is referred to as design optimization.
Today, there are a number of methodologies used in the field of design optimization including, but not limited to, response surface methodology, Taylor series expansion, neural nets, Kriging approximations, stochastic Monte Carlo simulations, and alike. However, there are a couple of problems associated with the design optimization approach: 1) it is too slow to achieve the optimal design and 2) the optimal design may not be conservative.
It is therefore desirable to have new improved method and system for accelerating design optimization to obtain an optimal design that is conservative.